Landfill archeology

Monday

Jan 20, 2014 at 12:01 AMJan 20, 2014 at 11:14 AM

The mountain of garbage at the Franklin County sanitary landfill grows taller by the dump-truck load - a topographical monument to waste, because much of what is buried each day is worth good money in the recycling market. For instance, a truckload of clean, baled milk jugs was going for more than $500 a ton this week; newspapers were worth $50 a ton.

The mountain of garbage at the Franklin County sanitary landfill grows taller by the dump-truck load — a topographical monument to waste, because much of what is buried each day is worth good money in the recycling market.

For instance, a truckload of clean, baled milk jugs was going for more than $500 a ton this week; newspapers were worth $50 a ton.

That makes a consultant’s study for the Solid Waste Authority all the more useful and interesting: People last year picked through randomly selected piles to scientifically categorize just what people send to the landfill and just how much of it there is in a typical load.

SWACO needed to know this before last month’s groundbreaking for the new Team Gemini industrial recycling park in Grove City, during which the waste authority announced it will “shift away from landfilling.”

Doing so means being able to provide a steady supply of raw materials to operations such as Team Gemini, which would convert the waste stream into biofuel and new products.

A fraction of the material couldn’t be sorted. About 0.4 percent blew off in the wind, stuck to the ground or was otherwise “lost.” But the rest fell into neat categories that could be weighed as a proportion of the waste stream.

The garbage delivered to SWACO’s transfer stations and landfill is what remains after community curbside pickups and other recycling efforts have had a chance to pull out the valuable stuff. So one might think that what is left is useless, such as diapers, cat litter and greasy pizza boxes. Nope.

Here are the results of the trash pick, by weight: By far, fibers, including newspaper and office paper, make up the largest part of the waste stream (29.2 percent). Next are plastics (17.1 percent) and food waste (12.8 percent). Then come textiles, such as clothing, carpet and bedding (8 percent); yard and pet waste (5.9 percent); wood, including lumber (5.4 percent); metals, including soda and food cans (4.2 percent); and container glass (2.7 percent).

The remaining 14.2 percent was lumped under “other.” That includes household-hazardous wastes, diapers and sharp objects.

These results show that central Ohioans could be doing a better job of recycling, though we’ve made some gains. A 2004 report on a SWACO waste-sort, part of a statewide study, showed 42 percent of our district’s waste stream was fiber/paper (now down nearly 13 percentage points). Container glass has disappeared by half, from 6 percent in 2003.

The new study also indicates that it is well worth SWACO’s effort to plumb its waste stream and become more self-supporting. The authority currently relies upon the $42.75 per ton dumping fee, which residents pay as taxes to communities or through private haulers.

The impetus for SWACO to move away from burying garbage is two-fold: Reuse is environmentally friendly, and money earned by selling waste-stream commodities can offset tax dollars that now support disposal operations.

But stuff comingled in the waste stream often is worth far less than clean materials kept out of the garbage to begin with. That’s something to remember the next time it seems easier to toss that soda can in the trash can rather than the recycle bin.

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